Starting the school year is so difficult that it discourages even veteran teachers. It is easy to see why so few people stick around to become veteran teachers. We have an awful lot of new teachers that last only a year or maybe two before they are off to find something else, anything else to do.

The problem is trying to focus so many disparate beings all in the same direction. A teacher's function is to act as a polarizer. The students come in from every imaginable angle, trying to go every direction. You have to intercept their thoughts, alter their expectations for the next hour (polarize them) and send them all in the same direction. A class in school is only tangent to plane that is the student's life. I intercept them only at this one point. It is so difficult to pull them out of their plane to explore my circle of ideas. Their uniqueness is so inertia filled. Changing the direction of their thoughts is difficult.

Well I made it through the first week with no air conditioning, in Atlanta, and in August. Will I ever get air for my sweating students?